Paris m'attend: A Walk in the Park- #3

Thank heavens for an assignment like today. After so much history and straight up in your face culture, todays walk was a welcomed relief. It was an easy "stroll" wandering through smallish back streets, eating at a pizzeria, a little shopping, a short moment of history and then a true stroll around Paris's version of Central Park. It's a national holiday today so the park was packed, and that gave us a great opportunity to just people watch. We loved it

Brittany and Kelli waiting for some great pizza.

Satisfied!

After lunch we found this very cute boutique and I bought my first Parisian clothing. About five minutes after we left the store I realized that I had forgotten that I was paying in euros instead of dollars, so my shirt really cost 30% more then I thought it did...oops! Sorry Jim! But I like it, does that count?

This was our short history stop. This statue of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army who was falsely accused of treason in 1894 and exiled for many years before being pardoned. Even though it's been so many years, this piece of history is apparently still a touchy subject in France and the statue is tucked in an out of the way corner because the government knows they need to recognize their mistake, but there is a certain amount of shame in doing so. Interesting that every country has stuff it would like to sweep under the rug.

The Park:

Le Jardin du Luxembourg

The palace in the back is the home of the French Senate, but dates back to the Médeci's

This picture is for Jim, notice all the remote control boats on the lake...they are for rent.....

At this corner we ran into a friend from Brittany's ward in Texas and she took this picture. What are the chances??

This isn't really a great picture, but try and notice the statue in the back. It's from the Médeci era. The thing about Paris is that everywhere your turn there are pieces of the history you study in school, but for those of us in the United States, we never see any of it and there is always an aura of mystery which makes it difficult to really accept as truth; it's sort of like a great story we get to read--at least for me. Today, looking at and reading about this statue I was struck by the fact that the Médeci's, like all the other stories I keep running into, were real live flesh and blood people who lived; and here is proof. Maybe I'm the only one that has read history that way, and I'm not sure I even realized I was doing it until today, but somehow, looking at this statue, it all focused a little bit sharper for me

This is the only place in the huge park where you are allowed to sit on the grass. Something the french have about "proper order and decorum even in leisure."

For Jeff F.

This building was built in 1834 to grow orange trees in, thus the name le Orangerie. Move over Mesa!

With an hour to spare before dinner, we headed to one of my favorite places from my previous trip here: to Shakespeare and Co. bookstore. I won't bore with the details that I find so fascinating, but suffice it to say that there are beds tucked in corners because this place, which feels like the books are going to fall in on you, sometimes doubles as a hostel for broke writers. NPR did a great story on it a couple of months ago because the founder just passed away-he was nearly 100 years old!